Rubbish claims in The Daily Mail

August 19th, 2013

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Daily Mail claims that EU regulations will force householders to use 5 bins for recycling are complete rubbish. What’s worse is that this is recycled rubbish as the Daily Mail ran with the same type of scare story in September 2011 when they incorrectly claimed the EU was foisting 9 bins on householders.

On Friday August 16th the Daily Mail published another article reporting that due to European recycling regulations every home “must be made to separate its rubbish into at least five bins”. Had the Daily Mail picked up the phone to this office they would have learned that under the relevant regulation there is no stipulation regarding the number of bins and indeed that it is at the discretion of each member state as to how they organise the separation of household waste. This is devolved even further as bin systems are often left to local and regional authorities depending on the facilities they have at their disposal.

For example, many people in the UK will be familiar with 3 bin system as widely used throughout London and other cities, in which there is a (1) food waste bin, (2) a recyclables bin (paper, plastic, metal, glass) and (3) a general waste bin for everything else. This system fulfils the criteria without the need for 5 or 9 bins as the main recycling bin already takes 4 different types of key recyclables.

Frequency of bin collection has nothing to do with the regulation as again this is at the discretion of the member state and its local authorities.

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